Monday 28 November 2016
Devon's Peer Review of SEND - feedback
Last week's visit to Devon from
the LGA Peer Review team culminated in a presentation and feedback from the
team at an open session on Friday.
After a welcome from Cabinet
Member for Children and Families, Cllr James McInnes, Devon County Council's
Chief Officer for Children's Services, Jo Olsson thanked the team,
saying: "This is a fantastic opportunity, and will enable us to
galvanise every bit of the system to accelerate our work in this hugely
important area."
Jo also thanked the many
partners, staff, parents and children and young people who had participated and
engaged in the review process, as well as the Peer Review support team.
The team's findings
Lead Peer Reviewer, Chris Baird, presented the feedback from the
team, following an intensive week of visits, meetings and discussions spanning
organisations and settings across the whole county.
Mr Baird paid tribute to the
teams and individuals they had met over the course of the week, saying it was
one of the privileges of the peer review to visit a new location, and this also
enabled them to reflect on their own area.
"This is the first LGA
Peer Review of SEND," said Mr Baird. "We are finding our way
through, and looking at what works well and where things can be improved.
"Our role is to act as a
critical friend and offer reflection."
In their presentation the team identified
strengths and areas for consideration, across a number of themes and this
proved to be a strong endorsement of our self-evaluation. These included
leadership of SEND reforms, identification, assessment and meeting needs, and
improving outcomes for children with SEND.
The team highlighted many
strengths, including the 'effective, strong and inspirational work to support
children and the progress they are making' by practitioners, and the 'really
impressive' clinical diagnostic work being carried out in schools. They
praised the fact that 'every teacher teaches SEND', and said that schools are
confident in their leaders, and that there is good engagement with schools.
Some of the areas identified
for consideration included strengthening the Local Offer, making it more user
friendly for children and young people, strengthening our partnership
integration to achieve a holistic response to complex needs and improving
communication across all partnerships to ensure a shared understanding.
A more detailed report will
follow next month, along with specific feedback about Education, Health and Care
Plans.
Welcoming the Peer Review
feedback, Head of Education and Learning, Dawn Stabb, said: "This
presentation is a validation of what we know about our capacity to move things
forward. We now need to look at our plan and how we can align feedback
from this Peer Review to give us a route map.
"Our Improvement Plan
needs to be targeted and clear on the actions and timescales, who will do what
and how will we know it's working.
"One of our key tasks is
to define what does 'good' look like and how will we know when we've got
there? We need clarity, transparency and consistency in the information
we provide at practitioner level, and how we communicate with parents.
"There's an opportunity
for us to harness existing resources and work more closely with them.
Structures are in place to work across partnerships that we need to utilise,
and ensure our commitment is consistent in meeting the needs of Devon's
children and young people, to enable them to become happy, skilled and
confident adults.
What next?
We will continue to
keep you updated on developments on the SEND reforms, with this bulletin going
out monthly. If you have any comments or suggestions please e-mail childrenfamiliesalliance-mailbox@devon.gov.uk
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